Self-coating method

For some applications it is desirable to prepare aerogels as thin hints that are either self-supporting or supported on another substrate. All common coating methods such as dip coating, spin coating, and spray coating can be used lo prepare gel films. 

While preparation of multilayers by the self-assembly method is less straightforward than that by the LB method, it still can be accomplished [11-13], The amphiphilic molecule should have a functionalized terminal group. In order to avoid either uncontrolled multilayer deposition or the simultaneous attachment of both head and terminal groups to the substrate, the terminal group should be protected. After the first monolayer is deposited, the sample should be removed from the solution, the terminal groups should be deprotected and the sample should be returned to the solution for deposition of the second layer. Subsequent deprotections and reimmersions allow one to coat the desired number of layers onto the substrate. 

Considerable amount of research has gone into the development and characterization of surfactant templated silica, in order to produce various mesophases and nanowire geometries with well-controlled pore diameters within the quantum confinement regime (i.e. 2-20 nm). Lu and coworkers have characterized one of the more promising methods, a sol-gel dip-coating method for rapid (tens of seconds) template generation. The fabrication process involves evaporation-induced self assembly of liquid crystal domains dominated by inward growth from the solid-liquid... 

A second simpler method that has been used to eliminate EOF is to mask the surface silanol groups using an adsorbed polymer. This self-coating or dynamic-coating method will be discussed in more depth in a later section of this chapter. 

During preparation of a photocatalytic membrane by the dip coating method a membrane is dipped in a 1102 suspension in water (Kim et al., 2003 Kim and Van der Bruggen, 2010 Kwak et al., 2001 Madaeni and Ghaemi, 2007), alcohol, for example, 2-propanol (Vankelecom, 2002) or other liquids. The membrane after dipping could be additionally pressurized with a compressed gas (Bae and Tak, 2005). The photocatalyst particles are self-assembled on a polymeric membrane due to a coordination of the functional groups present on the membrane surface (e.g., carbonyl or... 

Acrylic polyesters are also used by the polymer industry to produce fibers. However, the blends and composites of this class of polymers with conductive polymers were systematically prepared in the form of films One of the first attempts involved the electrochemical polymerization of 3-methylthiophene using an electrolyte solution containing poly(methyl methacrylate) [92]. By this method poly(methyl methacrylate) is codeposited on the electrode with the conductive polymer, forming a self-supported film. The conductivity of the film on the electrode side was two orders of magnitude higher than on the electrolyte side. Cyclic voltammetry and the visible spectra of the blend reproduce exactly the curves for the pure conductive polymer. This one-step synthesis is an alternative to the electrode coating method, provided that the insulating polymer host is soluble in the electrolyte solution. 

Conventional oil-based lubricants are not suitable for application in MEMS, as the viscous forces can be quite large when compared with the forces involved in operating these components because the size of the oil molecules is of the same order as those of MEMS components [5], Therefore, many researchers have proposed ultrathin organic molecular layers as the lubricants for Si-based MEMS systems [3, 5, 8]. These ultrathin molecular lubricant layers are generally formed by two methods (a) the Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) method and (b) the self-assembly method [9]. The LB monolayers have two main difficulties for their use as the lubricant layers for MEMS components (a) LB films are less wear resistant, as the interaction forces between LB films and substrate (van der Waals) are weaker [10], and (b) application of the LB method is restricted to flat surfeces only, and it is not practical to coat three-dimensional surfaces of a structure [11-14],... 

The surface modification methods of inorganic whiskers mainly include the wet method, dry method, in situ polymerization, sol-gel method, surface coating and coupling agent modification, self-assembly method, and so on. 

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